Black, Black Heart
by Puck the Faerie
Summary: They were raised to have Black hearts, Black minds, Black blood... (Bellatrix, Andromeda, Narcissa, Sirius, Regulus...). Memories stick.
1. Prologue

Prologue

&&&

And in the midst of all the groans, the tearing of flesh, the screams and curses and, finally, the cries of an infant, Bellatrix Black sat in the darkest corner of the room, cross-legged with a book of nursery rhymes in her lap. Bella watched the scene of childbirth with a detached expression on her face, wincing slightly when she glanced at her mother's ugly, contorted face.

Esther Black was laid out on the bed, Healers grouped around her, poking and prodding and muttering incantations. Her belly loomed hugely, swollen from pregnancy, and the rip of flesh and the sliding of blood and mucus and skin filled the room.

No one had noticed Bella slip so quietly in the chamber, and sit down in the corner. At first, Bella had been frightened, hiding her face behind her hands, biting her lip at the shrieks of pain. But something had hardened and now she merely stared, methodically memorizing every shout and grimace.

Her father, Alphard Black, sat outside in the hallway, probably completing that day's crossword puzzle in _The Daily Prophet_.

Bella was four years old. The year was 1956. It was the end of August, and the heat squelched the Black family uncomfortably, leaving unbecoming stains and frayed edges.

There was a horrible sucking sound, and Esther Black screamed once more. The Healers hurried to her, and, suddenly, held up a bloody and slick baby.

"A girl," the tallest proclaimed, and Esther Black fainted.

&&&

The baby was named Andromeda, after the loveliest constellation in the sky. (It was a Black tradition to for star-like names). Bella's emotions to her where taffy-like in their velocity, and fickle to the core.

Andie, as she was nicknamed, was a quiet child of grace and curiosity. Esther adored her, and Alphard doted. Bella _tried_ to be nice (she really did!), but certain moments brought out the worst in her.

Nevertheless, they were a happy family of four.

&&&

Sirius Black was their eldest cousin; seven years younger then Bella and three younger then Andie. From early on, the women of the family prized him. He possessed the aristocratic good looks of the Blacks paired with the creeping sensuality of Melifluas (his mother's family). He preferred Andie over the rest of the family, but Andie's father Alphard was a close second.

&&&

In 1960, Esther and Talitha (Sirius's mother) both became pregnant. Bella was nine, passionate already, and Andie was five, small and lovely. Sirius was two.

Bella lay in her room, tracing the painted constellations on her ceiling absent-mindedly. Her bed contoured to her, the blankets sticking like glue. It was a horrible, humid, summer day.

Bella always preferred winter.

"Two more years til Hogwarts, two more years til Hogwarts..." she muttered, her dark eyes fluttering open, then closed, with each breath.

She had been pegged as "the studious one" by her trying Aunt Talitha. This was almost true; she loved learning interesting new things, and then teaching them to her little sister and cousin, who watched her wide-eyed. "A professor, for sure," Aunt Talitha had sniffed, stroking her expanding stomach. And growing inside there? _A Minister of Magic, a Lord, a scientist...._, the urgent scribbles of Aunt Talitha, in her little leather-covered book, read.

A tap on the door.

"Yes?" Bella called.

It swung open, revealing her father, tall and stooped over in Bella's low-ceilinged room. "Hello," he greeted her, smiling slightly. He sat on a wicker chair in the corner.

Alphard Black was a tired man of thirty-five, though he looked fifty, at least. Esther Black, a young widow at the age of twenty-three, had fallen madly in love with the young, rich man of twenty-five, and had married him the following year. Marriage had not been kind to him. After the stillbirth of their first child, Esther had gradually transformed herself into a shrieking harpy of sorts; hysterical at the tiniest thing, and in cahoots with his sister-in-law, the scheming Talitha Meliflua. Alphard's face had lost its youth, and a weak chin was revealed.

He was not a happy man, to say the least.

"How are you?" he asked, trying and failing to be warm and welcoming.

Bella stared at him. "Fine," she managed, crossing her pale arms.

The conversation died. "I..." he began, then stopped, staring at his soft palms. He looked up, biting his lip. Finally, he asked her, "How do you feel about the pregnancy?"

She traced her bedspread. "I don't know."

"Your mother isn't very strong. I don't know if she'll...if she'll completely make it through."

"Can't the Healers do something?"

"They've been giving her a potion of some sorts, but Esther...your mother, I mean....She dumps it down the sink, or makes it Vanish."

Bella's head nodded forward, her neck bending oddly. Her long, dark slid over her face, and her fingers began to knot themselves together.

Alphard Black stood up. "I love you."

"Love you, Daddy," she murmured.

The door closed.

&&&

Andie clutched at the pale yellow sundress Bella wore. It didn't suit her at all.

Bella looked down. "What?" she asked crossly.

"Will Mummy be okay?" Andie barely whispered in her childish, feminine voice. Bella allowed herself a quick smile.

"I'm sure she will," she answered, turning back to her comic book (_The Amazing Adventures of Millicent Rose, Muggle Hunter_. It was very old, and very politically incorrect. Aunt Talitha snuck it to her.).

A strained scream in the other room. Andie jumped, sucking noisily on her index finger, and clutching Mr. Boo, her ugly and worn stuffed rabbit.

"She's okay," Bella murmured absently, intent on the green explosion Millicent Rose had just set off towards a rogue Muggle man.

"She's okay."

It was July, and Esther was a month overdue. Talitha had given birth back in January, to a frail baby boy named Regulus.

This was the first year in - well, it seemed like forever - that the other branch of the Black family had not come to spend the summer at Black Manor. Bella wondered if they would still go to 12 Grimmauld Place for Christmas. It seemed unlikely.

Andie bit her lip, a trait taken from her father, who was in Esther's bedchambers, standing in a corner, trying to offer words of consolation to his screaming wife (they weren't working).

Finally, though, the baby was born - and their father jumped out of the room excitedly - and their mother wept, full of love and anger and sadness - and Bella and Andie sat there,

It was a girl. Narcissa Black. The first to not be named after a heavenly figure in the sky. A flower, almost.

"Cissa," Andie gulped, trying to pronounce it; and the nickname stuck.

&&&


	2. One

Chapter One

&&&

Esther Black set the heavy silver letter opener down onto the wooden table. "Ravenclaw," she said, slightly confused. "Andie got into Ravenclaw."

"A most distinguished house," her husband murmured, himself an alumni of it. Absent-mindedly, he skimmed the Daily Prophet.

It is September, and the two oldest girls have been sent off to Hogwarts; Bella for her fifth year and Andie for her first. The pale little girl shivered and shook, desperately trying to keep her older sister's hand in hers. Bella, a first time prefect, hastily waved her off, and, ignoring her, ran to the sanctuary of the prefects box.

Cissa, the youngest, was six years old. Skinny and tall for her age; she took after her mother with her blonde hair and lanky body. At that moment, she was still asleep upstairs, snoring half-heartedly and struggling to stay slumbering.

&&&

Andie is a crescent moon of a child: pale, thin, and quiet. She is sharp-witted, and possesses the odd sort of intelligence that all of Ravenclaw's students own. While Bella takes after the Black side of the family, Andie resembles her mother's: the Lovegoods. Her features are delicate and pretty, though the aristocratic look of a Black lurks beneath. However, her eyes are the Black eyes: a keen gray color that glints like steel.

It was raining as she boarded the Hogwarts Express. Bella had abandoned her to hurry to the prefects box, and Andie was stuck with the task of finding an empty compartment. Finally, at the very end of the train, she stumbled upon one. Exhaling noisily, she slid down to the seat, closing her eyes momentarily.

There was a heavy knock on the door. Andie jumped, then hastily, with a confused and shaking hand, she opened it. A tall, white-haired man stood out in the trains hallway, with a few students behind him "Hello," he said, his voice burbling cheerfully. "May we come in?"

Andie nodded, scooting down next to the water-stained window. She watched as the professor (as she presumed he was) and the students walked in. The professor carefully sat down next to her.

He turned. "I am dreadfully sorry to intrude like this," he said, and extended his hand. "I am Professor Emery," he said. "The Potions Master. And these - "he pointed to the students "are a few bedraggled first-years I picked up along my hunt for a free compartment."

Andie nodded. "Hello," she answered. "Um...I'm Andromeda. Andromeda Black."

The professor raised an eyebrow to this, but was quiet. "And you are a first-year, I presume?"

"Yes."

A flaxen-haired boy turned from the window. "I'm Adrian Righ," he blurted. "Er...a...a pleasure to meet you."

The other girl looked up from her hand, where she had been nervously pulling at her cuticles. "Clara Wyatt."

"Oliver Skotos," the last boy murmured.

The four of them sat there awkwardly. Droplets of rain pattered onto the window like the Little Drummer Boy rat-a-tat-tatting. Andie clutched her robe in her hands, crumpling the fabric up.

"How do we get Sorted?" Adrian suddenly asked. "I mean...my cousins told me that..."

"Yes?" Andie said, leaning in; interested.

"That...that you have to wrestle a troll!" Adrian burst out, biting his lower lip hard with fear.

The professor (who had been fussing with his briefcase until this point) burst out laughing. He covered his face with a vein-ridden hand, trying to subdue his shrill giggles, but (alas) it did not work. The children stared at him, worried expressions crossing their faces.

"Professor?" Oliver said gently, poking his knee. "Are you all right?"

Professor Emery nodded, his shoulders sagging. He straightened, and, with a last snigger, he quickly told them this wasn't true.

Adrian leaned back in his seat, relieved. "Thank God...," he muttered, finding his handkerchief and handing it to the teary professor, who promptly blew his nose with a honk. "I'll never believe anything that Eli and Violeta tell me again..."

"Eli and Violeta Baien?" Professor Emery asked. Adrian nodded. "Ah, the twins...both a most...creative."

Adrian sighed. "Right. _Creative_...Well, they're excellent liars."

"What house are they in?" Clara asked, turning to Adrian.

"Gryffindor. They're in their fifth year."

"Does any one else have relatives at Hogwarts?" Andie wondered, glancing around. If they did, she didn't know them.

Oliver raised his hand half-heartedly. "My sister," he said. "Angelina."

"Mine, too," Andie said. "Bellatrix."

Again, Professor Emery raised his eyebrow - this time more discreetly.

"I'm the oldest," Clara admitted.

The rain outside had stopped, though the sky was still gloomy. Slowly, with a crunch of gears and the smell of steam, the Hogwarts Express pulled to a stop.

"Well," Oliver said, turning to Adrian, "I guess we'll find out how we're Sorted now."

&&&

Bellatrix sat at the heavy wooden table, twirling a quill, a bored expression on her face. She was in her fifth year at Hogwarts, her first year as a prefect, and ready to get out of the school. Formal schooling was such a waste, she thought.

The first years filed in, each one smaller then the last. Andie was near the front, right after a brunette boy who, by the looks of it, had a runny nose. Bella smiled lazily, ignoring her friend, Thalassa Macnair, who chatted on beside her, poking at her plate.

_Get into Slytherin, get into Slytherin_, Bella prayed, watching Andie like a cat.

The hat finished singing.

Professor Heller clapped three times, signaling for silence. A small woman, she was the Herbology teacher, and her orange hair had now turned mostly white, with the odd gray strand. She sat down, and watched with minute attention as the Deputy Headmaster, Professor Dumbledore, led the first years to the bedraggled wizard's hat sitting on the wooden stool.

"Addison, Hector!"

A small boy with an altogether too-large head stumbled up to the hat, twisting his hands nervously.

Thirty seconds later, the Sorting Hat called out "HUFFLEPUFF!"

"Amphion, Rebekah!"

"RAVENCLAW!"

Bella turned to Nathaniel Montague, who was busy reading some knut paperback novel. "God," she said nervously, peeling her napkin back into its original square form, "I hope she gets into Slytherin."

"Who?"

"Andromeda, my little sister, idiot! The one I've been worrying about all night!"

Nathaniel turned the page. "Ah," he murmured, "that one."

Nathaniel, while a nice person (and wonderful Quidditch player), was oblivious to the fact that, yes, the other people around him had lives of some sort.

"Black, Andromeda!"

"Shh!" Bella hissed at her friends. "She's up!"

The hat sat on her head for what seemed like hours to the agonizing Bella. It hemmed, and hawed, and wiggled around for ages, until, finally -

"RAVENCLAW!"

The Ravenclaw table, decked out in blue and bronze, burst into cheers and clapping. Bella could spy Nadine Foster (that little goody-two-shoes) welcoming Andie in, and making her sit next to her.

Bella fumed.

"What am I going to tell Mother and Daddy?" she asked, furious and distraught.

"Well, she obviously wasn't good enough for us," Xander Phelps interjected, helping himself to the chicken.

"Shut up!" Bella snapped, thumping her fork on the table. She turned to Thalassa, who was biting delicately into a Yorkshire pudding. "Well?"

Thalassa swallowed, then shrugged. "I don't know what _we_ could do, Bella. The Sorting Hat knows what it's doing, I suppose, so you better just get used to it. Besides," she said, cutting her ham, "It's not like you'll never see her again."

Bella sunk into her chair, her fork and knife still clasped tightly in her hands. She scowled, and Nathaniel put his book down only long enough to help himself to a peppermint humbug.

Humbug indeed.

&&&


	3. Two

Andromeda was utterly terrified of the thought of facing Bella in that huge hall, sitting at one of those roughly hewn wooden tables that was _not_ Slytherin. She could imagine Bella's pinched white face turning around, those heavy eyelids fluttering as she peered down at her younger sister, flames practically shooting from her nostrils. _Slytherin is the best_, she often had said back home, _Slytherin is for the Blacks_. And now Andie had ruined it all.

"If she truly loves you, she should be happy for you," a third-year named Pamela Greengrass had loftily responded to the conundrum. Ravenclaw was a tightly knit house, in which everyone knew everyone and their business (sort of like a certain family Andie could name at the moment).

Oliver, too, had gotten into Ravenclaw, and he now sat straight across from Andie, hungrily eyeing a plate of chicken three platters down from him. He had shrugged when Andie presented the problem, utterly unknowing.

Nadine Foster patted Andie on the hand reassuringly. "I don't like your sister very much," she confided, "but I don't think she'd be so horrible as to completely explode at her sister for getting into a different house then her."

Andie gulped. They didn't know Bella very well.

After the feast, a Ravenclaw prefect (a skinny, tall, and slumped boy named Jerimiah) led the first years to the common room, which was a large, slightly chilly room papered in blue and white wallpaper with bronze-fabric upholstered squishy chairs scattered among book shelves and several low walnut wood tables. Paper balls of light floated in and around the area, lowering or raising the accommodate the reader's height, and blue curtains covered the high windows. It was still raining outside.

It was so, so lovely Andie felt she would cry. Briefly, she thought back to descriptions of the Slytherin common room Bella had regaled back to the family during the summer: a cold dungeon draped with green and silver fabric on the walls that still did almost nothing to conceal the bricks beneath. High-backed chairs made from dark wood, with a rich green rug rolled out in front of the impressive fireplace and high ceilings will low-hanging silver metal chandeliers. Bella proudly called it "elegant" and "majestic", but Andie didn't think it sounded very comfortable at all.

"Classes will start next Monday," the prefect explained, citing the calender pinned to the wall behind them, next to brass coat hangers a few students had already slumped their coats over. At break feast that morning, they would also receive their schedules and be allowed a brief break to collect their supplies needed for that day. After that, they would have to stick to the times written out on their schedules.

"To the right are the girls dorms," the prefect pointed, "and to the left, the boys. You are not allowed into the opposite gender's quarters, and are expected to be asleep by midnight." Students began to file into the doors that led to the dormitories, and Andie said good-night to Oliver, waving as she stepped into the corridor lined with more wooden doors. A brass plaque on each said which year belonged to it, and Andie turned to her left, walking to the end of the hallway to enter the room marked "FIRST YEARS".

&&&

"I have Transfiguration first, what about you?" Sophia Jorbil breathlessly asked over the table. Andie glanced down at her schedule.

"Yes, same here. Taught by Professor Dumbledore, whoever he is." She bit into her toast, and wiped her upper lip free of marmalade before continuing. "History of Magic next."

Oliver groaned. "Angelina says that is the most _boring_ class ever. Supposedly the teacher, Professor Binns, died two years ago and came back as a ghost, but even _that_ didn't help his cause!"

Nadine leaned over him to reach the boiled eggs. "Hello, first years!" she cheerily exclaimed. "I couldn't help but over here that! And you are _wrong! _History of Magic is the most fascinating class of them all!"

An Asian girl next Nadine rolled her eyes. "Don't listen to her," she stage-whispered. "She's insane. Jerimiah and I had plans to assassinate Binns back in second-year, but he died before we had the chance." She stole a strawberry off Nadine's plate.

"Beverly!" Nadine exclaimed, turning back to her friends as the first-years turned away, slightly shaken.

"We're going to die," Andie murmured, staring wide-eyed at the jar of orange marmalade in front of her.

&&&

Bella carefully wrote her name down onto the corner of the parchment, nibbling absent-mindedly on her quill before she realized what she was doing, and spit out the feathery remnants. Nathaniel rolled his eyes as she tried to suppress her slight chokes, and turned the page to his novel. Bella glared at him, and raised his hands to his lips, whispering, "Shhh. It's getting to the good part; Wilhelmina is about to tell Veronica how she feels."

Bella raised the cover, narrowing her eyes as she read aloud, "_Frolics With Faeries: The Spicy Tale Based On The True Story Of One Witch's Love For The Other_." She snapped it back down. "What sort of trash are you _reading?_" she hissed, her dark eyes darting around angrily.

"It's good," Nathaniel whined as Thalassa whipped her head around.

"Quit exploiting my gender and shut up, class is about to start!" she snapped, poking at Nathaniel's...novel.

Bella began to hurriedly take notes, but soon her mind began to wander, as it usually did during History of Magic. She had considered writing a letter to her parents to explain just what had happened concerning Andie's Sorting, but soon thought better of it. A letter was written automatically, anyway.

She still felt angry at herself for this happening. Thalassa had written it off as "no big deal", and Nathaniel had compared it to a long story focusing on some fight he and his little sister had when he was seven or so and wanted to play with a doll of hers. Bella had patiently listened to the story, nodded along when appropriate, and slammed his index finger inside her potions textbook.

They didn't understand. Blacks stayed together no matter what.

&&&

Sophia jabbered excitedly as the three of them turned the corner, rushing to History of Magic. "Wow, when he turned that vase into a flamingo..._wow_! Wasn't it the neatest thing you've ever seen?"

"Merlin's Beard, Sophia, _shut up_," Oliver murmured, exasperated. He looked back down at the map of the school Nadine had helpfully scrawled for them the previous night. "Uh...I think we turn left up here..."

"I hope this works better then when we missed that step in the staircase," Andie grumbled. Oliver rolled his eyes.

"It wasn't my fault!" he maintained, folding the map back up and placing it in his sack. "Straight ahead, look."

The three of them darted inside, dreading whatever it was the next class period would bring. Andie twirled her head to giggle to a snide remark Sophia had said in response to Oliver's groans at her Transfiguration obsession, and bumped into -

Bella.

"Andromeda," Bella said, raising an eyebrow. "Hello."

Andie felt her mouth grow dry. "Hi, Bella," she stammered, acutely aware of her sister's dark eyes glancing up and down at her. A dark-haired boy next to her crammed his book into his school sack, and stuck out his hand, while the blonde girl behind him attempting to write down the last of the notes before Binns erased them from the board glanced at Andie and smiled.

"I'm Nathaniel Montague, pleasure to meet you, sister-of-Bella's," the boy loudly said. "I've heard about you (Bella has been in quite a slump lately, concerning your Sorting), and I would like to introduce myself before Bella lies about me and I would like to assure you that I like Ravenclaw, contrary to popular belief concerning Slytherins, so how do you do?"

Sohpia and Oliver looked on, slightly frozen.

Andie gulped, then slowly held out her hand. "Hi," she said softly, shy. "Um."

Bella broke out into a smile. "Andie, take good notes," she gruffly said, then turned to the blonde girl. "We're going to be late, Thalassa," she prodded, and then turned back to Nathaniel. "Don't touch my little sister, pervert," she said, poking him in the ribs with her elbow. "We've got to go to Arithmacy."

The older students rushed out of the classroom, and Andie sank down to her seat, and folded her hands.

"Well, that was my sister Bellatrix," Andie said matter-of-factly, "and she is not angry at me."

Her two friends merely gaped.


End file.
